Gov’t missed its own COVID-19 targets – Ateneo study

MANILA, Philippines — The Duterte administration failed to meet its own targets in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic due largely to its militarized approach and hastily crafted policies that did not give Filipinos time to adjust, according to a report published by the Ateneo School of Governance (Asog).

On Monday, political and development analysts Carmel Abao and Jayeel Cornelio published their working paper, titled “Social Development Reform in the Duterte Administration,” as part of Asog’s “Duterte@5: The Administration by the Numbers” series on President Rodrigo Duterte’s track record leading up to his final State of the Nation address on July 26.

While official data depicted a rosier picture — better poverty and education rates across the years — life on the ground reflected the opposite, the study said. “President Duterte may be very popular and official poverty rates may be going down, but these do not erase the reality that many Filipinos continue to feel and experience poverty and hunger — especially under the pandemic,” the researchers said.

“President Duterte did not use his political capital where it is supposed to matter: in the everyday lives of Filipinos,” they added. For example, while the country saw lower poverty rates under the present administration—16.7 percent as of 2018—more households in general (48 percent) rated themselves as poor under the Duterte presidency, according to Social Weather Stations (SWS)  data cited in the study.

Poverty and hunger While the country’s economic managers believed this might be due to the pandemic, the researchers pointed out that the rise in self-poverty rates actually started a year after President Duterte took office (from 44 percent in 2016 to 46 percent in 2017).

Hunger incidence in the country also more than doubled under the Duterte administration, peaking at 30.7 percent of Filipino households in September 2020 as shown in SWS data.

These numbers were made worse, they said, by the Duterte administration’s failure to provide a more responsive approach to the ongoing pandemic. For one, Mr. Duterte promised in June 2020 that the Philippines would be back to normal by December.

Instead of going back to normal, the Philippines still has not flattened the curve of COVID transmissions and even saw a second round of lockdowns in March 2021. Abao said this was partly due to the government’s choice of managers and leaders.

“They chose military generals (to lead the government’s task force against COVID),” Abao said. “They should have chosen more doctors and health specialists because it was a pandemic.”